Gabrielle ThibodeauSmall-Stakes Cash Strategist

Under the Gun Poker Explained: Positions, Bets and Jargon

I still remember the first time a dealer called out my seat and another player muttered "that's UTG, tightest seat at the table." I had no idea what he meant. Under the gun poker is simply the seat directly left of the big blind — the first player forced to act preflop, with nine or more opponents still to speak behind them. It's a position built on incomplete information, which is exactly why the term shows up in almost every strategy conversation you'll overhear at a live table or in a Discord chat. Even seasoned regulars sometimes mix up under the gun with the seat next to it, so getting the exact definition straight now saves confusion later when you're reading strategy content that assumes you already know it.

This glossary walks through under the gun poker and the terms that surround it — cutoff, outs, equity, float, barreling, freezeout, check-raise, and a few phrases tied to cheating you'll want to recognize. I've grouped related concepts together so you're not hunting through a random alphabetical dump. Whether you're studying a hand history or just trying to follow a table's banter, these definitions should get you oriented fast. I've found that players who learn these terms in clusters — position words together, betting words together — retain them far better than trying to memorize an alphabetical list from top to bottom. (see Wikipedia's glossary of poker terms).

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Positions and Betting Terms Every Player Should Know

Position terms describe where you sit relative to the button, and they change how wide or narrow your opening range should be. The cutoff poker meaning is the seat directly to the right of the button — the second-best position at the table, since only the button acts after you postflop. Compare that to under the gun, where you're guessing at a range against a full table of live hands behind you. Betting terms like check-raise, float, and barreling describe the actions players take once cards are dealt, and I'll define each of those inside the glossary block below. Freezeout poker meaning and check raise definition both live inside that betting-action cluster too, and you'll find both spelled out with examples in the glossary block at the end of this page.

Outs poker definition and poker equity definition both come up constantly once you move past position and into decision-making. Your outs are the unseen cards that improve your hand to a likely winner; your equity is the percentage share of the pot those outs translate into. If you want a tool that runs these calculations live at the table rather than by hand, NZT Poker is one option that computes pot odds and equity for the exact spot you're in — though it's worth understanding what that category of software actually is before you consider it, which the next section covers.

Where In-Hand Tools Like NZT Poker Fit the Picture

Not every tool that touches these terms works the same way, and the differences matter more than the marketing suggests. A HUD such as Hand2Note or DriveHUD displays opponent stats and leaves the decision to you — it's passive, and it's allowed on rooms that permit HUDs at all. A solver or trainer like PioSolver or GTO Wizard is used away from the table to study spots after the fact; it builds skill that stays with you once the software is closed. NZT Poker is different again: it's a real-time assistance app that reads the live hand and suggests fold, call, or raise while you're still deciding, across up to seven tables at once.

That in-hand distinction is exactly why real-time assistance sits in a different risk category than a HUD or a solver. RTA is banned under the terms of service at essentially every room, including the Asian club apps NZT supports, such as PokerBros and PPPoker — both of which have stepped up detection and enforcement in recent years. Detection typically means account closure and forfeited balance, not a refund, and it can extend across every club sharing that union's infrastructure. If you want to see how NZT frames its own feature set and the fuel-based pricing behind it, NZT Poker's GTO Poker Bench page lays out the probability calculator and multi-table claims directly.

Curious How NZT Poker Works?

One option among several in-hand assistance tools — weigh the account risk before deciding.

See NZT Poker's Features

How to Use This Glossary While Studying Hands

I'd suggest keeping this page open the next time you review a session. When a term like freezeout or check-raise shows up in a hand history site or a training video, look it up here rather than guessing from context — half of poker jargon means something slightly different from what it sounds like. The related-terms links inside each definition below connect concepts that build on each other, so following one thread usually clarifies two or three terms at once.

Under the Gun (UTG): The seat immediately left of the big blind, first to act preflop with the most players still to speak behind it. Considered the tightest position at the table because of the lack of information.See also: Cutoff
Cutoff: The seat directly to the right of the button, acting second-to-last preflop. Ranges here are wider than under the gun because fewer players remain to act.See also: Under the Gun (UTG), Button
Button: The dealer position, acting last on every postflop street. The most profitable seat at the table due to positional advantage.See also: Cutoff
Outs: The unseen cards remaining in the deck that would improve your hand to what is likely the best hand. Counting outs is the first step in calculating equity.See also: Equity
Equity: Your hand's share of the pot based on its probability of winning if all cards were dealt out. A hand with 40% equity wins roughly 4 times in 10 over the long run.See also: Outs, Pot Odds
Pot Odds: The ratio of the current pot size to the cost of a contemplated call, used to judge whether calling is profitable given your equity.See also: Equity
Float: Calling a bet with a weak hand, intending to bluff on a later street once the opponent likely gives up. Float poker relies on position and reading opponent tendencies.See also: Barreling
Barreling: Betting multiple streets in a row, often as a continued bluff or semi-bluff. Barreling in poker frequently follows an initial continuation bet that gets called.See also: Float
Continuation Bet (C-Bet): A bet made by the preflop raiser on the flop, continuing the aggression from the previous street regardless of whether the flop improved the hand.See also: Barreling
Check-Raise: Checking with the intention of raising if an opponent bets behind you. The check-raise definition covers both a trapping play with a strong hand and a semi-bluff.See also: Barreling
River: The fifth and final community card, dealt after the turn. It completes the board and is the last street on which players can bet, call, or fold before showdown.See also: Turn, Showdown
Turn: The fourth community card, dealt after the flop betting round closes. Betting on the turn is typically larger than on the flop.See also: River
Showdown: The point after the final betting round where remaining players reveal their hands to determine the winner.See also: River
Freezeout: A tournament format where eliminated players cannot rebuy or re-enter. Freezeout poker meaning is the opposite of a rebuy tournament, where a fresh stack can be purchased after busting.See also: Rebuy Tournament
Rebuy Tournament: A tournament format allowing players to purchase additional chips after losing their stack, typically within a set early period.See also: Freezeout
Real-Time Assistance (RTA): Software consulted during a live hand to suggest an action, distinct from a HUD (which shows stats but leaves the decision to the player) or a solver (used away from the table). RTA is banned under nearly every room's terms of service.See also: HUD, Bot
HUD: A heads-up display overlaying opponent statistics on the poker client during play. Unlike RTA, a HUD shows data only — the player still makes the decision.See also: Real-Time Assistance (RTA)
Bot: Software that plays hands automatically without human input. Treated as a serious violation on every regulated and club-based poker platform, with detection typically resulting in permanent bans.See also: Real-Time Assistance (RTA)
Blinds: Forced bets posted by the two players left of the button before cards are dealt, seeding the pot and giving every hand a reason to be played.See also: Under the Gun (UTG)
Multi-Tabling: Playing several tables simultaneously, common among volume-focused grinders. Software marketed for multi-tabling typically claims support for anywhere from four to eight tables at once.See also: Real-Time Assistance (RTA)

Gabrielle Thibodeau Small-Stakes Cash Strategist

Gabrielle Thibodeau learned to think about position with dice before she ever held cards. She spent her twenties in Montreal's backgammon money-game scene — a small, unsentimental world where every decision has a price, doubling-cube judgement is the whole game, and nobody applauds a lucky roll. When the local games thinned out she followed several of her opponents to the poker tables and found the same craft wearing different clothes: equity, pressure, and the long discipline of taking small edges seriously. She has played low- and mid-stakes cash ever since — live rooms around Montreal at first, then online — and she has logged every session since 2012, first in a notebook, now in a spreadsheet she reviews weekly, alongside several hundred thousand online hands she works through in the same unhurried way. The log is the point. Her conviction, formed at the backgammon table and confirmed at the poker table, is that small-stakes pools lose in the same handful of ways year after year, and that a player who fixes her own predictable errors before hunting anyone else's is most of the way to a solid game. On this site Thibodeau writes the cash strategy: position and preflop discipline, continuation betting, check-raising, blind play and bluffing — always for the reader facing an unknown field, not the one armed with a dossier on a specific opponent. Her examples are composites built from her own logs, and she prefers a boring line that works against everybody to a brilliant one that needs information most players never have. She is careful about what she does not claim. She does not present herself as a high-stakes player and has no interest in pretending; the stakes she writes about are the stakes she plays. And she will not attach a number to what a reader should expect to win — her log taught her how long the truth takes.